2. Hurt Locker
Can Kathyrn Bigelow direct the next James Bond film? I really think that franchise needs to sip whatever she’s drinking. Her heroes fully isolate themselves to the point where the outside world starts to ripple with paranoia, premeditation, and evil, but unlike Quantum of Solace there is a deep understanding of politics, family, and responsibility—the real marrow of the mundane. And have no doubts, this stuff is inherently cinematic. I will take a tense, deliberate bomb defusion over a visually muddled car chase any day.

3. Humpday
Two straight, male buddies decide to sleep together over a dare–sounds like a bad joke really, but Lynn Shelton pulls off a deeply funny and effective study of the male psyche, cultural norms, and thirty-somethingness. Actors Mark Duplass, Joshua Leonard and Alycia Delmore should also be given their due for making these characters believable and fully schizoid like we all really are. Our image of ourselves is rarely tested in daily interactions, so one mimics the liberal, open-minded intellectual in theory until life calls your bluff. Uncomfortable laughter was never so liberating!

4. Big Fan
Obsession is one of the most perplexing emotions to convey on screen, as it is so all-consuming—saturating every pore of the afflicted—that two dimensions seem inadequate to capture all of its wicked energy. The particular micro-world of sports fanaticism is done even less justice. However actor Patton Oswalt and writer/director Robert Siegel captured all the slovenliness, delusion, and anxiety that are characteristic of the fan drop kicked over the edge. True derangement turns out to quite funny in retrospect.

5. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
Nicholas Cage has finally returned from the wilderness of depressing action films and family friendly dreck to shock us into attention. It probably won’t last, so even more reason to soak it up now! Cage shuffles about like a rabid dog motivated by a lust for drugs, guns, women, and drugs in that order. Somehow under all this vice, he creates a sympathetic sociopath who is ironically led hellward due to a good deed. When I first heard this was a Werner Herzog film I thought it must all be some joke. Why would he troll in such pedestrian fare as a cop drama? Alas now I know only one with Herzog’s sardonic view of humanity could create such an off-kilter love note to New Orleans.

6. Avatar
Despite hokey dialogue and predictable plot machinations, James Cameron managed to transport me out of my stationary seat, stale air, and awkward glassware for what seemed like a comfortable eternity. Pandora is the most fully convincing virtual environment I’ve seen on film since Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Therefore, it is not surprising that the successful depiction of Gollum convinced Cameron that his long-gestating dream was possible. Taking cultural and natural cues from Earth didn’t manifest the fully alien, but rather the fully convincing. I await the inevitable sequel…

7. An Education
A lovely meditation on the arrogance of youth, this gem slowly reveals itself. What I like most besides Carey Mulligan’s puckish wit, is the patience and care with which the camera sweeps onto a moment in time. It feels like a memory even though all the action takes place in a present past. We are seduced along with Jenny, and we root for her even as we curse her naïveté.

8. Moon
Though a slight film by any definition of a space epic, the actor Sam Rockwell pulled off the impossible. He created two characters from the same DNA that live life in convincingly divergent health, relative age, and sanity so that I genuinely forgot he was alone on the set. Director Duncan Jones seems to have materialized from the ether with this succinct reverie on what it means to be human at a very inhumane time. My secret dream is that truly forward-thinking space operas like Space Odyssey 2001, Alien, and Solaris will make a resurgence. Hopefully Moon is a sign of the times.

9. Goodbye Solo
Lead actor Souleymane Sy Savane is refreshing as a good-hearted, immigrant taxi-driver. So rarely do we encounter hard-working transplants in American film even though reality would be a perfect source of stories. Ramin Bahrani has made a career of exploring the lives of people depicted on the edges, but who are actually at the heart of our cultural experiment. Souleymane’s personality is so infectious and endearing that his encounter with a self-loathing and bitter William, played with acerbic zeal by Red West, seems unfair for us as well as Souleymane. They both end up leeching a little bit of the other’s spirit and ultimately both learn that life is full of duplicity.

10. Up in the Air
For once Clooney’s deadpan delivery, wry smirks, and facial pratfalls equaled the sum of its parts in a film that is actually kind of serious. Everyone I know is unhappily, under, or unemployed so following around an individual who fires company lifers for a living is a hard sell. However Jason Reitman takes the opportunity to tackle the simple question: What is the meaning of life? Is it having an office to trudge to everyday or is it pursuing your dreams or is it finding a “co-pilot” to enjoy life with? The answer is obvious, but we are too stubborn to see it, so we might as well be kind to everyone we meet lest they become our bosses, lovers, or friends some day far off in the future…

The Rest of the Best

11. Gomorra
12. Up
13. Broken Embraces
14. Zombieland
15. The Road
16. Children of Invention
17. Watchmen
18. Star Trek
19. Rudo y Cursi
20. The Maid
21. Summer Hours
22. Black Dynamite
23. Antichrist
24. Fantastic Mr. Fox
25. The Messenger
26. Coco Before Chanel

Every film invites the audience to emotionally include themselves in the events unfolding on screen. While Hollywood is now using 3D technology and IMAX screens to draw audiences in, sometimes all you need is a good story about people we can relate to on some level. When I turned on 2009’s “Humpday”, I expected to watch a comedy about two random dude friends who decide to make porn together on a whim. I had seen the trailer months ago and had decided that it would be a rental, as the trailer played up its bromantic comedy elements, and I had already seen “I Love You, Man” a few months prior. As I scoured my Netflix instant play options for something new, I noticed that “Humpday” was available for streaming. After some technical difficulties with the internet connection, I was ready to experience 100 minutes of male bonding gone awry.

You first! No, you first!

The plot is simplicity itself: Ben is just a normal suburban guy with a great wife, a good job, and a white picket fence existence. Andrew is an artist who travels the world looking for the great inspiration that will allow him to finally complete an art project. When Andrew unexpectedly drops in on Ben and his wife Anna (at 1:30 in the morning, no less), it shakes up all their worlds in ways that no one could anticipate. During a drunken stream of consciousness, Ben and Andrew decide to shoot an amateur porn scene together on the pretense that two straight male buddies having sex on camera could be the “next great artistic statement” and of course, Anna has no idea of their plans.

As the viewer, you have to believe that these two guys would come up with such an idea and actually want to realize it. I think that the film being set in Seattle helped me believe the premise right away. If it were set in a place more thematically obvious like San Francisco, the film could almost be read as satire. Putting the film in Seattle allows the viewer to believe that these guys could be open minded enough to shoot a pseudo-gay art-porn scene while not having to pay lip service to any gay stereotypes. Not to say that San Francisco is full of gay stereotypes, but some viewers who have never been to San Francisco or only have a limited exposure to alternative cultures might unfairly judge the film or write it off as just “another one of those crazy indies.”

As Ben and Andrew respectively, Mark Duplass and Joshua Leonard have great chemistry. I could see how these two disparate characters would be friends, and their performances suggest a past that the characters shared without having to use a lot of expository dialogue to explain it. Duplass reminds me of John Krasinski while Leonard’s performance has shades of Owen Wilson (with a sprinkle of Zach Galifianakis, and I’m not just talking about the beard). As Ben’s wife Anna, Alycia Delmore gives a very honest performance. Anna serves as the female perspective to all the male-centric craziness that it happening around her and Delmore’s performance keeps the viewers (and the male leads) grounded in reality. She’s the one that gets to ask the questions that we all want to initially ask: “Hey, what do you mean you’re going to make a porn with your best friend? What the f*ck is up with that?” I only wish that Delmore had more screen time, as her character unfortunately takes a back seat to her male co-stars. I would love to see these three do another movie together.

Alycia Delmore

Writer-director Lynn Shelton frames the actors in simple, home video style scenes that feel intimate almost to the point of sheer discomfort. I kept listening to the dialogue but sometimes I couldn’t look at the screen as they were saying it. I was so embarrassed for these characters at times because they felt so real and familiar. It very much feels like you are in these conversations, and that you are a party to the events that are unfolding in front of your eyes. Shelton directed the film from her own script, but I wonder about how much the actors improvised because the dialogue feels very natural and flows as real conversations would. The opening scene with Ben and Anna in bed together is one of the most true to life moments between a man and a woman I have ever seen in a film, and it’s not even that shocking or important to the story. It isn’t necessarily a film about sex or pornography or even art. It’s about all of these, and none of these. It’s a film about two men discovering what it means to be close friends, and the crazy ends that some friends will go to understand the nature of that closeness. Mainstream films like “The Hangover”, “Pineapple Express”, and “I Love You, Man” deal with the same issues but use homoeroticism as more of a sight gag than a statement, which is fine because these films do it well and it’s good to laugh at masculinity sometimes. “Humpday” plays less like an addition to the new bromantic comedy pantheon, and more like a deconstruction of it. The film simultaneously questions male masculinity while reaffirming it as well. The film ends in exactly the way that it should, but you have to see it to believe how it all turns out. All around, “Humpday” is one of the best films I’ve seen all year, and I recommend it to anyone who loves independent film as well as people who might have thought “I Love You, Man” played it a little too safe. I give it a 9 out of 10.

Another fertile year for filmmaking, 2009 closed out the decade strongly with a plethora of wonderful films. Narrowing it down to 10 was tough, but somehow, we accomplished it. Let us know your picks in the comments below.

10. The Box

The victim of a poor marketing push, Hollywood’s unfathomable belief that Cameron Diaz is still a box office draw, and Richard Kelly’s general zaniness, The Box has already faded away from the public memory. Which is a pity because Kelly’s third film is a fascinating, terrifying, engrossing look at greed, conformity, and selling-out. Its also a stylistic achievement that shows Kelly as a fantastic craftsman while paying homage to science fiction, b-cinema classics. Boasting the year’s finest score (sorry Up) and a creeptastic performance from Frank Langella, The Box deserves to find the same afterlife Donnie Darko did.

9. Where the Wild Things Are

There were a lot of detractors of Spike Jonez’ film adaptation of the classic children’s novel, but Where the Wild Things Are is a truly magnificent film. The film, much like the book, is about imagination and how it’s as much a way to understand things as it is to escape them. The film isn’t about escaping into a dream world, it’s about the inherent loneliness and confusion that, though often attributed to teenagers, is often overlooked in kids, and the Wild Things personify the major emotions felt by Max. A film that will probably remain controversial, Where the Wild Things Are is a joy to watch, whether you’re a kid or an adult.
8. Humpday

What stays with you about Humpday isn’t the Apatow-esque premise but how real it feels. Director Lynn Shelton’s handheld, DIY style and freewheeling, improvisational set-up gives the film a genuine realism that is missing from most movies. Anchored by great performances from Joshua Leonard and Mark Duplass, Humpday crafts a tender, realistic portrayal of male anxiety and friendship, with plenty of awkward laughs and great moments.

7. The Brothers Bloom

Heist films and films about con men all tend to run along the same narrative: one guy or a team gets together for one last, big score that will set them up for life. The Brothers Bloom starts that way, but the further it goes, the more it separates itself from the rest as being the most fun heist/con man movie since Oceans 11. The cast is absolutely perfect, not missing a single beat in the whole film as Rian Johnson continues to establish himself as an up and coming auteur. The Brothers Bloom is the kind of movie you can watch over and over again and still find something new to love.
6. Up

Pixar took the moving opening to Wall-E and raised the ante in the first ten minutes of Up, creating a sequence so honest and wrenching that it’s a miracle anyone still had the energy to watch the movie that followed. Up is a thrilling, old-fashioned action-adventure film, a hilarious buddy comedy, and an unbelievably moving tearjerker that earns all of its emotional beats without naked manipulation. And all of that is without even mentioning one of the year’s funniest characters (that would be Dug), Michael Giacchino’s thrilling score, Pete Docter’s fascinating visual palatte, and the film’s brilliant repeated use of simple geometric shapes.

5. Inglorious Basterds

Quintin Tarantino loves to take old cinema conventions and turn them into his own, twisted creations, and with Inglorious Basterds, he regains his stride. Taking the World War II/Nazi Germany film and throwing it in a blender, Tarantino’s film is more fun than anything since Kill Bill Vol. 1. Not for the weak at heart, Inglorious Basterds is a film that lived up to all its hype.

4. In the Loop

The obvious touchstone for starting any conversation about In the Loop is Dr. Strangelove. But whereas Stanley Kubrick’s film took the terrifying reality of nuclear war and blew it up to hysterical proportions, In the Loop succeeds because of how frighteningly plausible it is. Words become bombs and, in the hands of people like Peter Capaldi’s inspired Malcolm Tucker, are contorted and twisted until they lose all their meaning. Like the best satire, In the Loop isn’t just hilarious but it reflects the way that, deep down, we all worry the government actually runs.

3. Coraline

An absolutely stunning film, Coraline is a be careful what you wish for tale that dazzles from start to finish. Coraline takes animation to new heights and defies the expectations of a children’s movie. For every moment of wonder and imagination, Coraline has one of equal creepiness and dread. Henry Selick outdoes his prior masterpiece, The Nightmare Before Christmas, in creating a instant classic that’s unlike anything else you’ve ever seen.

2. The Fantastic Mr. Fox

Wes Anderson’s films have always filtered complex, adult emotions through a childlike lens, so its kind of appropriate that his best film in eight years is a children’s movie. The dream pairing of Anderson and author Roald Dahl led to a film of charming wonder, one that’s feels so hand-crafted and personal that you can almost see the fingermarks on the clay characters. Brought to life with the detail and whimsy of a fourth-grade literary diorama, but with Anderson’s trademark melancholy and sophistication, no film left you feeling quite as happy as Fantastic Mr. Fox did this year.
1. The Hurt Locker
In most war movies, the horror of war is depicted through extreme violence, alienation from those at home, and even a lack of both of those. In The Hurt Lockera story about however, it comes out as suspense, the terrible feeling in the pit of your stomach that something awful is just a second away from happening, and obsession. In the end, The Hurt Locker is ultimately not a film that wants you to understand the Iraq War or even war in general, but rather give it’s viewer the nerve racking sense of dread of war that few war movies can convey.

The AV Club
The AV Club praised the local film saying, “Duplass, Leonard, and director Lynn Shelton succeed in making an outrageous premise utterly plausible, while scoring consistent laughs out of the tension between two men who truly love (and secretly envy) each other.”

Week 6 Participating Vendors

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posted by Shania Singh

This week, ~La Petite Morte~ is offering a gorgeous set of sculpted curtains to suit your decorating needs! These curtains are scripted with three different textures to match nearly any decor – even the curtain rod gives you the choice of white or distressed wood. For only 69L, these lovely, modifiable curtains are an absolute steal!

Come visit us at our new mainstore at Fusion Crossing!

Sundance Film Festival
Local cinematographer Benjamin Kasulke’s (Humpday, Wheedle’s Groove) work will be featured at Sundance next month with the world premiere of the film The Freebie. Kasulke shot the film, directed by Katie Aselton. The Freebie about a young married couple who decide to give each other one night with someone else and stars Dax Shepard, Katie Aselton and Sean Nelson (Harvey Danger, My Effortless Brilliance). Click the above link to read more about the film on the Sundance 2010 Online Film Guide.

Dir. Lynn Shelton
(2009, R, 93 min)
★ ★ ★ ½

“Boys,” says Monica, after Andrew (Joshua Leonard) runs away, intimidated by the sex toys she and her girlfriend Lily (Trina Ward) have brought to bed for their intended three-way. Monica is played by writer-director Lynn Shelton, who utters the word with a bemusement towards masculinity that matches the rest of her film. Besides being perhaps the best title of a movie ever, Humpday is an interesting take on the paradox of heterosexual male affection — bromance without the romance — and has a frankness and intelligence about sex that reminded me of Kevin Smith’s Chasing Amy.

The premise of Humpday comes from Hump!, an annual amateur porn festival held by Seattle’s The Stranger newspaper. It’s a real thing. I know it because I follow Dan Savage, a sex advice columnist for The Stranger who blogged the event. I think he’d like this movie; the characters in it could easily be real subjects from his call-in podcast — so maybe he wouldn’t like it. It opens with Ben (Mark Duplass) and Anna (Alycia Delmore), a happily married suburban couple whose house is invaded at two in the morning by Andrew, Ben’s old college buddy. Andrew has spent years as a vagabond free spirit; he’s the kind of guy who cozies up to people with “Dionysus” posted on their front door, and they’re not kidding.

At a wild party — booze and hookahs! — the Hump! festival is mentioned and, as often happens under the influence of psychotropic substances, someone has an brilliant idea: Ben and Andrew, longtime straight buddies, should film themselves having sex together! How bold! How unprecedented! It would be a shoo-in. (Someone should perhaps clue in these proud bohemians to the gay-for-pay phenomenon, though I suppose gay-for-free remains an untapped market.)

What starts as a ridiculous proposal made under the influence becomes a game of chicken where neither man wants to back down, and soon the hotel is booked and the date is set. Neither man is sure why he’s doing it, but it becomes clear that it’s more than just a dare to them.

The dialogue was improvised based on detailed scene outlines and then edited down to the best material. I didn’t know this when I first watched the film and marveled at how naturally the characters speak, how authentic the performances are, especially by Alycia Delmore, who has what could have been the thankless role of the disapproving wife but turns out to be the film’s linchpin. She grounds the story, stands in for the audience, and speaks volumes with a look. She has a scene with Duplass after she discovers what he’s planning that is mature, honest, and direct. It’s one of my favorite pieces of acting this year.

I wonder what this film would be like if it were directed by a man. Would it have worked? Would a man be able to look at the friendship between Ben and Andrew with the same clarity? I think it might have turned out more like I Love You, Man — a very good film but whose tone would be all wrong for this particular material. Shelton, who is neither a man nor man-hating, observes with charmed curiosity the details of male bonding. There’s a grappling scene during a heated basketball game that has the tangled intensity of a sexual liaison. The scene is not blatantly homoerotic — it’s too broadly silly for that — yet at the same time Shelton seems to wonder, isn’t there something more going on there?

When the director Lynn Shelton, after two and a half months of editing, finally submitted her chatty comedy Humpday to the Sundance Film Festival this year, she had a single confident thought: “This is a f***ing good film. If I don’t get in, it means they’re idiots.” Mbt shoe 

Not only did the movie get in, but it also won the Special Jury Prize, became the darling of the festival and was subsequently fêted four months later at Cannes, where it was the subject of a seven-minute standing ovation. “I was wobbling there in a pink satin cocktail dress and huge stilettos, trying to be gracious, feeling like Marilyn Monroe,” the 43-year-old Shelton says today. “It was insane.”Mbt shoes 

And yet Humpday simply should not work. This neurotic comedy is burdened with a premise that would make seasoned studio heads wince. Ben, a newly married traffic planner and self-described “domesticated dude”, is paid a surprise visit by former best friend, the footloose, restless Andrew. The pair slowly reignite a complex and combative friendship, one that is eventually charged by an impulsive drunken decision at a party to enter an amateur porn festival with a video … of them having sex. The film will be “art” and will prove to the wider world that, though they may be ageing, Ben and Andrew are still liberated wildcards at heart. “It’s beyond gay!” they announce proudly as they conceive their knuckleheaded scheme. When the hangovers clear, however, these two exceedingly straight men refuse to back away from the challenge. Much mirth, naturally, ensues.Shoes Mbt 

That an inventive, original movie is born from this most unlikely of premises is impressive. That it manages to avoid the derivative “bromance” clichés of Judd Apatow movies (see Superbad, Pineapple Express) is equally so. But that it unfolds with beautifully observed analyses of male friendship and some of the most hysterically funny set pieces of any movie this year is utterly unexpected, and testament to the talents of the lead actors, Mark Duplass and Joshua Leonard, and the director, Shelton, who have somehow transformed a cringe-worthy concept into peerless screen comedy.

“Neither Mark nor Joshua thought it was possible to take this ridiculous premise and do it in a believable way,” says Shelton, a Seattle-based film-maker. The idea for the film came from a conversation with Duplass, when the pair were discussing Seattle’s annual festival of home-made porn, Humpfest! “The idea was to take two characters that you understand and put them into a situation that is outside their comfort zone. And it’s hard to think of a more uncomfortable situation in which to place two straight guys than this one.”

Shelton recruited Duplass, a 32-year-old veteran of the indie scene, to play the as yet unformulated role of Ben. Duplass, in turn, invited Leonard, a 34-year-old fellow actor (The Blair Witch Project), to play Andrew.

“We bounced ideas off each other for months,” Leonard says. “It was all about taking this really stupid idea and seeing if we could make an audience believe that it could really happen.”  discount Mbt shoes 

The movie was shot in Seattle for less than $500,000 over ten short but intensive days. The script was a 15-page outline of a story without a word of dialogue. Shot in sequence, everything spoken on screen was improvised. The latter is central to the movie’s authenticity, Shelton says, explaining how she let Duplass and Leonard roam freely with indulgent 45-minute takes on scenes that ended up being edited to only minutes long. Mbts

Shelton says she could tell early on that the results were intriguing. Duplass and Leonard blurred the lines between character and self (“Ben is like me two years ago,” Duplass confesses), and seemed to flop from scene to scene with an ease that served plot and credibility equally well. The story pitches them from the late-night party through a scene in which Ben attempts to ask his wife, Anna (Alycia Delmore), for her permission to make the film, to the climactic shoot in an anonymous motel room, the actors all the while filling the blank narrative spaces with ingenious character observations and a withering sense of unspoken tension. “My, what a life you’ve lived my friend,” says Ben, early on, ostensibly complimenting Andrew’s carefree ways.

Shelton refused to write a conclusion for the film, instead leaving the content of the final motel scene (the last scene on the schedule) entirely up to the actors. “It was the one scene that we didn’t discuss,” Duplass says. “We said we’re going to check in at 7pm and check out at 7am, and we’re going to obey our characters, but we had no idea what was going to happen in that room.” Leonard adds: “It was exciting, but also a little bit scary. What you see on screen with Mark is my first ever man-kiss. Certainly couching it all as art made it safe for me to explore, but I would stop short of saying it was enjoyable.” Shelton is keen for us not to discuss what actually happens, but will assure any prospective viewer that they “left all [their] preconceptions at the door”.  Mbt

Since its subsequent Cannes hoopla, Humpday has become a boon to the careers of Leonard and Duplass — Leonard is in a new TV show, Hung, and Duplass is in the new Ben Stiller movie, Greenberg. Shelton, meanwhile, has been fielding offers from Hollywood heavy-hitters, including, ironically, Apatow’s production team, which offered her a bromance of her own to direct. She warns, however, that she is “not interested in regurgitating what’s already been done”. Meanwhile, she is happy to grapple with the essence of Humpday’s success. “It’s because it has real characters based on real interactions,” she says, contemplating the absurdity of such a wild idea running headlong into reality. “It’s recognisable to everyone. And if it’s funny, it’s only funny because it’s true.”

This year’s festival is over and after enjoying a few cinema days I got the chance to put a few thoughts together both for the event itself and the movies I watched as well.

• Great organization; online calendar to share, updated with any last minute changes and easy to share with friends (that could be a bit improved but already great that it’s there).
• Tickets via sms for internet enabled phones, awesome and worked like a charm!!!
• BUT, but, but and but! Why do we need to come and pickup our membership card ourselves, when the option to buy them online is offered? (maybe because there should always be a reason to stand in the queue for…).
• Let alone why does one need the membership card to watch even one movie, don’t like that.

Movies:

• Humpday; interesting and kinda entertaining but not much more than that.
• World’s Greatest Dad; emotionally strong, Robin Williams is a great actor (one of my favorites) and turned it from comedy to an emotionally tense manifest of self catharsis.
• Dogtooth; bold, provoking  and definitely doesn’t let you go without thinking, no accident it won the best film award!
• Tetro; liked it but not thrilled, not a big deal.

Looking forward to next year!

Director: Lynn Shelton

“Humpday”, to put it simply, is the mumblecore answer to bromantic comedies like “I Love You, Man”. Such an easy description doesn’t quite do the concept justice, however, as director Lynn Shelton uses her rather obscure premise to create what is, at times, a surprisingly touching comedy. The film not only explores the limits of male bonding, but, in a beautiful sequence in a hotel room, it illustrates heart-to-heart as foreplay.

A brief introduction to mumblecore: a group of young directors – the Duplass Brothers (“Baghead”) and Joe Swanberg (“Nights and Weekends”) among them – aim for ultra-naturalism with the armchair philosophies of twenty-something city-dwellers. The movement’s defining characteristics have shown to be their limitation, however, as very few of these films find something unique to say. “Humpday” is one of those that does.

The set up reminds me of Kelly Reichardt’s terrific “Old Joy” (that was neo-neorealism, not to be confused with mumblecore, got it?). Two old  friends are reunited – the free-spirited friend, Andrew (Joshua Leonard) in this case, returns home from some time in Mexico to visit a college friend, Ben (Mark Duplass). Ben’s married, has his own house, and is looking to start a family with his supportive wife, Anna (Alycia Delmore).

While at a party with Andrew’s friends, Ben learns of an art festival known as Humpfest. Amateur filmmakers make thematically rich pornographic films, which are then burned at the end of the contest – they’re taking back pornography, as they say. Suddenly, Andrew and Ben are confronted with an idea: two straight guys having sex. It’s beyond gay.

I like that Shelton never went for the simple gross out gags. For two straight men about to make a porn tape, they remain rather mature – only in mild, awkward conversations do the logistics of the whole situation surface (how will they, for instance, get erect?). The film’s lengthy final sequence, taking place in the hotel room that serves as a film set, is quite touching. In preparing for fornication, the men are driven together by this intimacy that’s largely unmatched between straight male characters in film. It’s an absurd set up for what is actually a quiet, tender finale.

“Humpday” mostly works because of it’s premise. Other “mumblecore” efforts, like “Nights and Weekends”, suffer from a miniscule narrative and not enough to say. There’s something to these characters beyond “embittered hipsters in love”.

Indiewire
Lynn Shelton’s Humpday has been nominated for the John Cassavetes Award as part of the 25th anniversay Film Independent’s Spirit Awards. This award is given to the best feature made for under $500,000. The other nominees include Big Fan, The New Year’s Parade, Zero Bridge, and Treeless Mountain. Click the above link to see the full list of nominees.

My Effortless Brilliance
Directed by Lynn Shelton

Medicine for Melancholy
Directed by Barry Jenkins

American independent cinema, especially in these days of relatively cheap digital means, is too varied and disparate a thing to ever have an overarching trend, but one strong movement that’s emerged of late has been mumblecore, a poorly named but nevertheless important reaction to some of Hollywood’s excesses. Few filmmakers willingly call them as such, and it’s really more of a style or feel than a philosophy of filmmaking, but there’s nevertheless a group of films that share the aesthetic and general themes: there’s the natural, improvised dialogue that gives it its name, but also a preoccupation with very specific interpersonal relationships, a handheld, documentary-style camera and a general lack of artifice to the whole proceedings.

Lynn Shelton made one of the standouts of the genre with Humpday, about two heterosexual male friends who set out to make a gay porn, a witty and very down-to-earth film that deconstructed male friendships in the funniest, breeziest way possible (and which also had a criminally short run in Edmonton). Thanks to the popularity of that particular film, one of her earlier works, My Effortless Brilliance, is now out, and it’s an interesting study in just the kind of tightrope this style demands walking.

My Effortless Brilliance is the story of a somewhat pompous writer, Eric (Sean Nelson), and his frayed relationship with an old friend, Dylan (Basil Harris). It’s quite similar territory to Humpday, at least thematically—though its rustic setting also recalls another better minimal film about male relationships made by a female director, Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy—and though Brilliance isn’t nearly as deep and successful, Shelton still puts together a very naturalistic exploration of friendship.

The main problem is that only one half of our equation is fleshed out. Eric is a ridiculous man, obviously with some level of talent, but who has mostly used it to get away with acting like an ass to those close to him: the first scene is Dylan telling him as much, an abrupt brush-off that comes after a day of Eric mostly just looking at various writing utensils and conducting fake interviews with himself. A few years later, Eric is in the neighbourhood of Dylan’s new, rustic digs, and decides to look him up and try to reconnect. Once that starts, there are some choice moments, including a brief discussion between Dylan and his neighbour about the desire to hit someone with an axe, but it suffers for the fact that we really don’t know much of anything about Dylan. Eric seems an ass, sure, but Dylan is nothing, and so we’re left waiting for Eric to act so we can get Dylan’s reaction, which hurts both its natural feel and a sense of momentum or depth.

Shelton would correct that entirely in Humpday, and I have to wonder if Medicine for Melancholy, also out recently, isn’t Barry Jenkins’ My Effortless Brilliance, a first step towards a natural and evocative style of filmmaking that nevertheless doesn’t quite get enough right to totally work. In this case, Jenkins’ main stumbling block is how caught up he is in trying to make a larger point: this is a story of two young, black San Franciscans spending a day together after a one-night stand—Micah (The Daily Show’s Wyatt Cenac) and ‘Jo (Tracey Heggins)—though it’s also a film about being a minority in a gentrifying city, and too often the latter overwhelms the former.

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with making a larger point—if anything, that seems to be the natural evolution of mumblecore, from fully realized, personal films to fully realized, personal films that also manage to say something deeper, like Humpday—it’s just that the point is constantly budding into the naturalism, and there are times when it feels like we’re listening to pointedly crafted arguments more than the honest chit-chat of two people who barely know each other. Especially that time Micah and Jo rather conveniently happen to walk by a community meeting on gentrification.

Again, though, there are moments: a carefree spin on a carousel, the goofy way Micah checks his face in a mirror, the quiet walking or bike riding. And it needs to be said that it’s about time this style got brought of its basically entirely white spectrum. But Jenkins is so obsessed with his points that those quickly give way to more arguments, and it’s hard to work up a lot of emotional attachment to the characters, something that’s basically essential when everything else is so minimal. If he can find a way to imbue those arguments a bit more realistically into his characters, make it feel more like a natural topic than the big idea, Jenkins could well be onto something special.

Humpday’s premise is what gets your attention.  Two old straight guy friends, after a night of drinking & who knows what else (seriously, they don’t give too much specifics there), decide to make an art porn film for a local newspaper’s art porn festival.

The film spans about two days’ time, starting with the reunion of the two friends to the premise-defining moment.  Director Lynn Shelton moves the story along quite easily, if somewhat indulgently with an overabundance of closeups.  The audience isn’t told these guys are conflicted about their drunken decision, but the actors draw out their hesitations.  Given that this isn’t exactly a top-line production, some shaky camera work is forgiven – at least by me.

The two lead actors, Mark Duplass & Joshua Leonard, both exude a charm akin to popularized versions of their archetypes.  Duplass is Jim Halpert in a few years and Leonard is a toned down version of Zach Galifianakis’s characters in both The Hangover and Bored to Death.  Both acquit themselves well, with the climatic moment of “will they or won’t they” hotel sequence given them both a lot of emotion to subtly convey.

The real standout performance, though, comes from Alycia Delmore.  As the wife of Duplass’s character, she brings out the full range of confusion, anger, frustration, and love toward her husband and his intoxicated decision.  There were a few scenes of hers that stood out, specifically when Delmore and Duplass finally discuss his intentions and her answer, while so elegantly written if somewhat expected, just overwhelms his performance.  Her delivery, and the conflicted emotions she wordlessly conveys, is simply excellent.  Delmore doesn’t have a lot of credits on her IMDB page, but she really, really deserves larger-seen work, if not larger roles.

Overall, the movie was interesting, even though it wasn’t entirely surprising on the steps along the way.  I definitely recommend it, so either rent it or buy it to find out what you think.

I approached the content of Seattle writer/director Lynn Shelton’s Humpday with some trepidation – in America pretty much the worst thing you can say (or even imply) about a straight man is that he may have some sexual interest in another man. You can see this in evidence in everything from homophobic stand-up comedy to sports trash-talking to films about straight men posing as gays to gain some special right or privilege (or the girl). What I did not want to see was yet another gay-bashing disguised as comedy. I was delighted to find the subject treated in an honest, sensitive and thoughtful manner in the knowing and funny film Humpday.

Dealing with issues of identity and choices beyond sex and sexuality, Humpday chronicles the reunion of college buddies Ben and Andrew. One has taken a more conventional path including marriage, a house and talk of having children. The other has followed the path of the Beat generation artists and poets, traveling around the world with no particular goal in mind but the trip itself. Their assumptions about one another are challenged as are their doubts about themselves and the choices they have made.

Shelton’s script is beautifully crafted and realized. Knowing a bit about the film from reviews and word-of-mouth, I wondered through the first half hour or so how she was going to pull this off. Natural, believable characters unfold as their relationships bend and twist and evolve, revealing surprising truths about love and friendship and sex. Strong performances from the cast, including Shelton’s own luminous supporting role as free-spirited Monica, demonstrate the director’s skillful,  subtle touch. Alycia Delmore’s turn as Anna, the patient wife struggling to understand her husband and herself and what it means to be married, brings a focus and clarity that is clever and satisfying. Mark Duplass and Joshua Leonard ultimately carry  the day though, delivering what feels like a single seamless performance in their critical scenes together. Their chemistry is just right, as is this enjoyable AND intelligent film.

Humpday is available on Netflix.

Trailer

Critic Sean Axmaker reminds us that this week three DVDs of note were released: Lynn Shelton’s Humpday, Lynn Shelton’s My Effortless Brilliance, and The Exiles, with both Sean and Sherman Alexie on the commentary.

Says Sean:

The Seattle independent film scene may not exactly be the buzz of the festival circuit but it is making itself heard. This week, it echoed through the DVD new release rack, thanks to the simultaneous release of Lynn Shelton’s two recent films. But on a more personal (and much more self-serving) note, another Seattle fixture made his DVD debut this week: ME. Yes, I made my long-awaited (at least by me) DVD commentary debut on the Milestone’s superb two-disc edition of Kent Mackenzie’s The Exiles, a forgotten landmark of genuine American independent filmmaking at its most personal and authentic. All kidding aside, this is a remarkable film and a tremendous DVD release, and only my modest participation in the project prevented me from putting it on my upcoming “Best of 2009 DVD” list. More later. First, let me celebrate the home video invasion of Seattle director (and my friend) Lynn Shelton.

Read his whole review/preview here>

Indie Wire
Last summer, as Lynn Shelton’s Sundance fave Humpday was about to open in theaters, Dan Savage, the founder of Seattle amateur porn festival “HUMP!” called out Shelton on his blog. “He demanded that I show HUMP! some love because, as he pointed out, without the existence of HUMP!, there would have been no Humpday,” Shelton told indieWIRE today. “I had to agree.” In fulfillment of her promise to Savage, Shelton decided to make a quasi-sequel to Humpday to screen at HUMP! Entitled Beyond Gay, the short film follows a gay man and a lesbian who attempt to get it on one particularly randy morning. Shelton came up with the concept for the short while filming $5 Cover Seattle. IndieWIRE has the short up for viewing at the above link.